The Reluctant Wife: Chapter 54

‘No,’ I scream as he reels back.

I race across the grass toward him as he stands there with the gun aimed at the person on the ground.

When Ryot locked me in the closet, I was so pissed off. If he thought he was going to leave me there while he went in search of whoever had blown up Quentin & Tyler’s boats, then he was dreaming. I heard him move away, then threw my bodyweight against the closet door over and over again. Luckily, the latch was defective and burst open.

I scrambled down the stairs, and when the sound of shots reached me, I almost had a heart attack.

This is probably the stupidest thing I can do. I have no weapon, no training, and no defensive armor. If I put myself in the line of fire, I’ll likely put him in danger as well, because he’ll be distracted.

There is no way I can stand by and watch him sacrifice himself for me either. He’s in danger, and nothing can stop me from going to him.

I burst out of the house in time to see him reel back. My heart pounds like a drum against my chest. I run so fast my feet don’t seem to touch the ground. In seconds I reach him, and grip his arm ‘Are you okay?’

He shakes his head as if to clear it, then cups my cheek with his free hand. ‘Are you okay?’ he asks tenderly.

‘Of course, I am. Though I’m pissed that you thought you could lock me in the closet and leave.’ I shake a finger in his face. ‘You and I are going to need to have a talk about your protective instincts.’

He smirks. ‘We can talk about my instincts anytime.’

I scoff and begin to turn, but he stops me with a hand on my shoulder. ‘You sure you want to see this?’

Something in his gaze tells me I’m not going to like it, but hey, I haven’t come this far to lose my nerve at the last second. Not when the person who’s turned my every day into a nervous reality, where I’ve had to second-guess my every step and jump at shadows, has been taken down. ‘I need to see who it is, so I can get some closure.’ I set my jaw.

He nods. ‘It’s not pretty.’

I square my shoulders, then turn and take in the figure on the ground. All dressed in black, with camouflage paint streaked across her features, her eyes are open and looking into the distance, already glazing over in death. There’s a smoking hole between her eyes.

‘Veronica?’ I furrow my brows.

How? Why? I shake my head, not sure how to equate what I am seeing with the meek, excitable, and largely supportive woman who’s been my personal assistant for more than a year. Suddenly, my mind starts flashing with memories of things she did that made me uncomfortable—the bowing and scraping, using my full honorific every time she addressed me, the fervency with which she viewed my position and her admission she wished she were a princess; going so far as to ask if I knew any single princes, followed by her concern about Gavin.

OMG! The signs were there, and like an idiot, I ignored them. My stomach roils. Bile boils up my throat, and I swallow it away. I will not be sick. Will not.

There’s a sound behind me, then Ryot’s arm circles me from behind. ‘I’m sorry, I know she was a friend of yours.’

‘Not that good a friend, apparently. And she was my employee, which means she was never really my friend.’ A distinction which is, once more, brought home to me. Another reality of my life which I need to be able to accept. There are very few people in my life I can trust, very few relationships money and my position haven’t tainted. Ryot is one of them. His grip around my shoulders slackens. I turn to find him swaying. ‘Ryot!’ I throw my arm about his waist. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘It’s just a scratch.’ He laughs, then coughs, a look of surprise on his face. He looks down at his chest. I pull up his shirt and gasp. It’s a small circle of red, almost deceptive in its size. ‘You’re hit,’ I cry.

He coughs again and stumbles.

I try to grab him, but his weight is too much. I manage to slow his fall, though not enough; the back of his head connects with the sand.

‘Ryot!’ I pull off my blouse and press it against the wound. There’s a buzzing sound in the distance. That must be my heart racing and going into overdrive. The blood saturates the cloth I have pressed to his chest so quickly, I gasp.

I look up to find his features are pale, but his green eyes glitter. They look at me with almost feverish intensity. ‘If something happens to me⁠—’

‘No, nothing can happen to you.’ I taste salt on my lips and realize I’m crying. ‘I will not let anything happen to you.’

He laughs. ‘My fierce, strong Empress.’ He coughs. More blood spurs out of the wound.

‘Ryot, don’t speak, please.’

The buzzing sound grows louder.

‘That’s the chopper; you’ll be safe now.’ Some of the rigidity melts from his shoulders. ‘If anything happens to me, remember… I love you.’ He closes his eyes.

‘No, no, no, no.’ I continue to put pressure on his chest. ‘Ryot, open your eyes.’

When he stays still, I slap his face. ‘Wake the fuck up. Don’t you dare die on me, you asshole.’

He coughs, then cracks open one eyelid. ‘Jesus, woman, taking advantage of me while I’m down, I see.’ He shuts his eyes again.

‘Ryot.’ I cry. ‘Don’t leave me, please.’

There’s no response. My heart feels like it’s going to cleave through my ribcage. The pressure in my head feels unbearable. No, no, no. This can’t be happening. ‘Wake up Ryot. I need more orgasms. Many, many, many more orgasms, which only you can give me.’

His eyes open, and he laughs, then winces in pain. ‘Glad you have your priorities right, woman.’ His eyelids flutter down, and he slumps.

There’s something about his stillness that sends my blood pressure shooting. I keep pressure on the wound and begin to cry in earnest. ‘Oh, Ryot…please baby…hang in there. I beg you.’

I can’t take my gaze off of his face. Not when the whump-whump-whump grows deafening, and the helicopter comes in for landing on the beach. Not when the wind from the rotors results in sand blowing over us. Not when the paramedics from the chopper race toward us and place an oxygen mask around his face.

Not when someone guides me to my feet, and I follow the medics as they rush the stretcher with him into the chopper.

I hold his hand all the way to Verenza and then through the doors of the hospital, letting go only when they rush him into surgery.

‘How is he?’ Zoey bursts into the waiting room of the Verenza Medical Center.

I open my arms, and she rushes over to sit next to me and hug me. ‘I’m so sorry this happened Aura.’ She rubs my back. Hearing her concern prompts a fresh burst of tears. I bury my face in her neck and sob.

‘There, there, honey, he’s going to be okay,’ she assures me.

I nod. He’s going to be fine. I keep telling myself that. And I want to believe it so badly. ‘Sorry you had to cut your holiday short,’ I murmur.

While Harper and Grace returned to London, Zoey opted to explore some of the countryside of Verenza.

She huffs. ‘There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here with you.’

Footsteps approach, then someone else sinks into the seat next to me. Someone else wraps an arm around my shoulder, and I look up. It’s Imelda. She’s been sitting with me almost since I arrived, only briefly leaving to take a break.

‘Thank you for staying with me. I appreciate it.’ I manage a tremulous smile.

‘Oh, hush, we’re family,” she squeezes my hand.

Then another thought strikes me. “I thought you flew back to London with Arthur?”

“When we heard the news, I asked Arthur to charter me a plane so I could get back here. You don’t think we’d leave you unsupported in a time like this, do you? He’d have come too, but the old man’s not as strong as he once was.”

The warmth in her words brings forth another bout of tears.

“Oh honey, don’t cry.” She offers me the paper cup filled with a brown liquid, but my stomach cramps at the thought of drinking it.

‘I’m good,’ I shake my head.

‘How about some water?’ Tyler prowls up. He twists off the cap, hands me a bottle, and I take a sip.

‘Any word?’ I ask.

He shakes his head, expression grim. ‘They’re still in the operating room.’

Tyler, Quentin, and the rest of their teams had discovered the bombs on their boats and managed to jump off before they’d detonated. A second chopper came along and fished them out of the sea. They survived with minimal injuries.

‘Why is it taking so long?’ I grip my fingers together.

‘He’s going to be okay.’ Tyler sinks down on his haunches and takes my hands in his. ‘He’s a fighter.’

His features seem tortured.

I know he feels responsible for not being able to stop Veronica from shooting his brother. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault that she got to us. She had us all fooled. She’s been in my trusted circle for a year, and I didn’t suspect a thing.” I shake my head.

‘We checked her background, and nothing came up.” His jaw hardens. ‘I should have been more vigilant. I should have been able to track her down before she got to the both of you.’

“We should have been able to put her away much sooner than this.’ Quentin prowls over to stand next to Tyler. Despite my distress, I can’t help but notice how these Davenport men are uniformly large and forbidding-looking and yet, also, hot.

‘If anyone is at fault it’s me.’ I lower my chin. ‘I’m the one who trusted her with the details of my location. If I hadn’t texted her from the island, she’d never have found us. But—’ Tyler opens his mouth to speak, but I hold up my hand. ‘But I know better than to blame myself. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s Veronica’s. She betrayed me. Besides, I worked with her the closest, and I had no idea what she was up to.’

A part of me does blame myself for it, but I push it aside. I can’t afford to think like that. I need to stay strong for myself. For my husband.

‘We looked into her background but, except for the fact that she went to a disproportionately large number of schools on account of her parents moving around, there was nothing that indicated she could be capable of what she did.’ Tyler drags his fingers through his hair. ‘She had a university education and did a stint in the army before she joined you.’

‘Knowing she was trained in arms and defensive protocol is what made me recruit her.’ I nod.

‘Her training should have made her an obvious suspect, but one of our security team reported seeing only a man so we were focused on that,’ Quentin says grimly.

‘We’ve since found out that team member was working with Veronica.’ Tyler sets his jaw. ‘She was slim enough to dress in man’s clothes and since the person on our team was colluding with her, he reported her as such. It’s another reason we didn’t suspect her.” Tyler draws his mouth into a firm line.

‘We also found a diary hidden in her room at the palace. Something we didn’t find the first time.’ Quentin locks his mouth in a grim expression.

‘It was the compromised member of your team who searched her room?’ I make a guess.

Tyler nods, his eyes troubled. ‘In it, she talks about being jealous of the fact that you were a princess, and she wasn’t. That she didn’t think you deserved it. She wanted to find a way to scare you.’

‘Hence, the note on my pillow in the hotel room?’ Which makes sense. She was one of the people who had access to my room.”

‘Turns out, she had something of a crush on Gavin, and when you broke up with him, she approached him.’

“She did?’ I ask surprised. Then, I remember her messaging him on our trip from the safehouse. Not to mention, I caught the way she looked at Gavin a couple of times, but I dismissed it as my imagination.

‘We picked up Gavin for questioning.’ Tyler bares his teeth.

‘That could not have gone down well with his family,’ I mutter.

Tyler scoffs. ‘The Davenports have more money and are more powerful than his family, and given he confessed to forming an alliance with Veronica to get revenge on you for dropping him, I don’t think we have to worry about their feelings.’

“We screened him earlier but couldn’t find anything suspicious in his past,” Quentin says grimly. “Nevertheless, we should have anticipated he’d act on the threats, he made against you. I take responsibility for the fact we weren’t able to stop him before he teamed up with Veronica.”

“You’re not the only one who was taken in by them. They had us all fooled.” My head feels like it’s spinning. First, Veronica; now, Gavin. I shake my head. ‘Ohmigosh! That’s how she got access to the money and the firepower to blow up the boats and the guns!’ It almost cost my husband his life, and that of his brothers. The implications make me lightheaded. I take another sip of water and try to compose myself.

Tyler eyes my features. ‘You alright? We can always talk about this later.’

‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘Let’s do it now. If not, I’m just going to fret about him. This way, it takes my mind off of him being in surgery.”

Tyler nods; not that the concern on his face eases. ‘She has no history of erratic behavior. Nothing out of the ordinary to flag suspicion.’ He shuffles his feet. ‘Which is no excuse. We should have been more thorough in tracking her movements.’

‘Considering she was my assistant and had the highest clearance, you’re not the only one who failed to spot something amiss with her.”

“That’s no excuse.” Tyler frowns. “We should have stopped her, but we didn’t. I’m sorry for what happened.”

“Both of you took time out of your lives to help with the security arrangements at the wedding. I have no doubt, that’s why the ceremony went off without a hitch. You put your lives at risk to guard the island. You were there in time to take him to the hospital. You didn’t fail.” I look between the men. Their expressions are serious. Both look exhausted, with dark circles under their eyes. ‘Thank you for taking the time to see this through. Thank you for being there for him… For us.’ My throat closes. A choking feeling squeezes my chest. I blink away the burning sensation threatening to overwhelm me.

‘Hey’—Quentin eyes me with concern—’it’s going to be okay. Ryot’s a stubborn bastard. He’s going to pull through.’

The door to the waiting room opens, and a doctor in scrubs steps in. I rise to my feet, as does Tyler. The doctor’s features are serious.

I swallow down the bile which coats my tongue and, ignoring my trembling limbs, I walk toward him.

The doc hands me his dog tags.

My stomach bottoms out. Oh no. No, no. no.